Challenges of Local Ownership: Understanding the Outcomes of the International Community’s ‘Light Footprint’ Approach to the Nepal Peace Process

ABSTRACT

This article investigates whether a ‘light footprint’ approach to peacekeeping and peacebuilding by the international community more effectively addresses local drivers of conflict than the dominant model of large, multidimensional peace operations. It considers international engagement in the Nepalese peace process through the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), and argues that the international community’s approach to local ownership became more focused on non-imposition and therefore less politically engaged over time as a result of both local and international factors. This facilitated local elite ownership of the process, which fundamentally undermined the international community’s capacity to support peace consolidation as elites moved away from key transformational pledges of the peace settlement.

KEYWORDS:

• United Nations
• peace process
• local ownership
• DDR
• Nepal
• constitutional reform

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jem Atahan and my colleagues in the Politics and International Relations programme at La Trobe University for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Jasmine-Kim Westendorf http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1543-0719

Notes

1. Interview with Ian Martin, New York, February 2011.

2. Interview with GTZ official, Kathmandu, November, 2014; interview with senior UNDP officials, November 2014; interview with senior Nepal Trust officials, Kathmandu, November 2014; interview with the director of a Nepali NGO, Kathmandu, November 2014; interview with the director of a Nepali women’s NGO, Kathmandu, November 2014. This issue is also discussed in Ghimire and Upreti (2010).

3. Interview with a Nepali PhD researcher, Kathmandu, November 2014.

4. Interview with a Nepali newspaper editor and journalist, Kathmandu, November 2014.

5. This point was also made during an interview with senior UNDP officials Kathmandu, November 2014.

6. Interview with a Nepali newspaper editor and journalist, Kathmandu, November 2014.

7. Ibid.

8. Interview with a GTZ official, Kathmandu, November 2014.

9. Interview with senior Nepal Trust officials, Kathmandu, November 2014.

10. Interview with senior UNDP officials, Kathmandu, November 2014.

11. Interview with a GTZ official, Kathmandu, November 2014; interview with senior UNDP officials, Kathmandu, November 2014.

12. This point was also made in an interview with a senior UN Peace Fund for Nepal official, Kathmandu, November 2014.

13. Interview with senior UN officials, Kathmandu, November 2014; interview with a senior UN Peace Fund for Nepal official, Kathmandu, November 2014.

14. Interview with a GTZ official, Kathmandu, November 2014; interview with senior UNDP officials, Kathmandu, 2014.

15. Interview with a Nepali civil-society activist, Kathmandu, November 2014; interview with senior UN officials, Kathmandu, November 2014; interview with a senior UN Peace Fund for Nepal official, Kathmandu, November 2014; interview with a GTZ official, Kathmandu, November 2014.

16. Interview with senior UNDP officials, Kathmandu, November 2014.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the La Trobe Asia 2014 Small Grant Program (La Trobe University).

Notes on contributors

Jasmine-Kim Westendorf

Dr Jasmine-Kim Westendorf is a senior lecturer in International Relations at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, and a research associate at the Developmental Leadership Program. Her research revolves around why peace processes often fail to establish lasting peace in civil-war contexts. She has conducted field research in East Timor, Bosnia–Herzegovina, Nepal, Cyprus, Palestine, Cambodia, and at the UN Headquarters in New York, as well as with the humanitarian sector in Geneva. Her book, Why Peace Processes Fail, was published by Lynne Rienner in 2015, and she has published in leading academic journals, including International Affairs and the Australian Journal of International Affairs.